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I look at him, and the second he notices the expression on my face, he mutters a curse. “That serious?”

“Shut up.”

I grin. “Should I ask Dad if Damaris needs an extra pair of eyes too?”

Lucan glares at me for a second. Then a slow smile spreads across his face. “Ooh, that’s why Rowan got the VIP treatment.” His grin widens. “So did you. I heard you had him playing all to yourself.”

“Careful now. You might be my cousin, but⁠—”

“Your dad put you on Rowan, didn’t he?”

I don’t bother answering. The look on Lucan’s face says he’s already connected the assignment, the invitation, and the fact that I cleared a room just to hear Rowan play.

The annoying thing is that he’s right. Rowan might’ve gotten the VIP treatment, but I’m the one who got the private concert.

The memory slips back anyway. Not the concert, exactly. Him. The shivers that chased across his skin when I stood too close. Those soft, surprised breaths he thought stayed private.

Something about him has gotten under my skin. Not just his face, though that’s more than enough to keep a man entertained. It’s the way he looks all nerves and softness right up until he opens his mouth and decides he’d rather bite.

If he ends up on his knees for me, I won’t complain. But it’s the defiance that keeps ruining every reasonable explanation I come up with. That, and the way he plays the Noctis.

And most of all, Dad won’t tell me why he wants my eyes on Rowan.

Now I can’t get them off him.

I should’ve left him alone that first night. I chased him instead. Cornered him against a wall, felt his pulse slam beneath my hand while he snarled at me through it. That should’ve been where I walked away. Somehow it was where I stopped being able to.

One stupid chase, and now every time somebody says his name, I listen.

That never happens.

A burst of laughter jerks me out of my thoughts, and I look up to find Marius at the far side of the rail with two girls hanging on his every word. One of them steals a sip from his glass while he says something in that dry, quiet voice of his, and both of them dissolve into giggles.

They’re probably hoping to end the night on one of our laps. Shame, really. Marius is the sort of pretty boy who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him and never even realizes he’s doing it.

Pretty sure neither of them is his type.

Rafe, meanwhile, is having the time of his life. If any of my cousins is an unhinged motherfucker, it’s him.

The other guy is big and clearly stupid for agreeing to fight my cousin. He’s game, charging in with more confidence than sense, but he’s no match for Rafe.

My cousin slips the first hit, takes the second on the ribs, and answers with one brutal shot to the mouth. It snaps the guy’s head back hard enough to wake the whole room.

“Come on, baby, fight me,” he sings.

The crowd roars when the guy gets back on his feet, wipes the sweat from his face, and squares up again.

“Fucking suicide,” Lucan mumbles next to me, lifting his empty glass for a refill. “Must have deserved it.”

He’s not wrong. Nobody ends up in the pit because they’re having a good night upstairs.

Rafe shoves him back into the wall, says something low in his ear, then lets him swing wild. Catching the wrist, he yanks him forward and drives a knee straight into his face.

The bell sounds, and the floor men are already moving before the loser fully tips sideways.

A few girls peel away from Marius’s side the second the floor clears, hopping off their stools with bright eyes. Rafe’s climbing off the stone grinning, the man he split open already forgotten.

One catches his arm before he’s fully through the gate, another already touching his shoulder, calling dibs. He laughs, says something that makes them both giggle, and lets them hang on him like they’ve won a prize.